Site Mobile Navigation

Patient Deaths in New Orleans Bring Arrests

Employees and patients of Memorial Medical Center being evacuated two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.Credit
Bill Haber/Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La., July 18 — A doctor and two nurses were arrested Tuesday after the Louisiana attorney general accused them of using lethal injections to kill four elderly patients in a New Orleans hospital last year in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Quoting other hospital staff members, a state affidavit portrayed the doctor, Anna M. Pou, as methodically ordering up a list of patients remaining at the flooded Memorial Medical Center, three days after the storm. Many had already been evacuated from the hospital, which was surrounded by five feet of water and was baking in 100-degree-plus heat. The sickest, however, were still there.

“A decision had been made to administer lethal doses,” Dr. Pou told a witness, according to the affidavit, released by the office of the attorney general, Charles C. Foti. Then, the authorities said, a witness saw Dr. Pou and the nurses filling syringes.

A 61-year-old patient identified only as E. E. was chosen. “She was going to tell patient E.E. that she was going to give him something to help with his dizziness,” the affidavit said. Dr. Pou entered E. E.’s room, it said, and closed the door.

The information collected by Mr. Foti’s office was turned over to a grand jury in Orleans Parish for a formal indictment and eventual prosecution. All three women were released without bail Tuesday. But the arrest warrant prepared by the attorney general says the three committed second-degree murder, a crime that could draw a life sentence.

“This is not euthanasia; this is plain and simple homicide,” Mr. Foti said several times at a news conference here, although he declined to ascribe a motive to the killings.

He also said that the investigation was not over and that additional charges and arrests could be imminent.

A spokeswoman for Eddie Jordan, the New Orleans district attorney, said the charges would be presented to the grand jury.

Rick Simmons, a lawyer for Dr. Pou, said she was “absolutely innocent.”

“She volunteered for storm duty and stayed there for five days,’’ Mr. Simmons said, “and then the State of Louisiana abandoned the patients and the hospitals and everybody else.”

Mr. Simmons declined to discuss the details of the complaint, saying formal charges had not yet been filed.

Lawyers for the nurses could not be reached.

What happened in the hospitals of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — particularly at Memorial Medical Center, where at least 34 patients died — has for months been the subject of intense speculation and anxiety in the city.

Many have suspected that one of the storm’s darkest chapters was written in the towering hospital, now empty, on Napoleon Avenue in the Broadmoor district.

With Tuesday’s announcement by Mr. Foti, the fear that critically ill, elderly patients had been put to death was given more fuel.

Mr. Foti described a long, complicated investigation, sometimes contested by hospital officials and involving the testing of tissue samples from victims.

The tests revealed morphine and another powerful sedative, Versed, in what Mr. Foti said was a lethal combination. According to the affidavit, medical records showed that none of the four patients had been receiving either drug in their regular medical treatment.

He said the doctor and two nurses had decided who would live and who would die.

“They took the law in their own hands,” Mr. Foti said. “They’re not the lawgiver.”

The patients would have lived through the evacuation if they had not been killed, he said.

The attorney general’s affidavit did not address why a doctor and two nurses might take the lives of sick patients while others were being rescued from the flooded hospital.

Photo

From top, Dr. Anna M. Pou and the nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry are accused of using lethal injections to kill four New Orleans hospital patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Foti said he was not required to provide a motive, but Mr. Simmons said the attorney general did not have one.

“If it’s homicide, the usual motives are greed, revenge, profit, jealousy, those type of things,” Mr. Simmons said. “None of that existed. The reason they can’t give any motive is because there’s no homicide.”

Only scattered hints were offered by the affidavit, which suggests that the hospital was desperately trying to evacuate its patients and that officials there were determined that no one alive should be left there. It describes a hospital drama on Thursday, Sept. 1, the last day before large-scale help arrived in the city.

The affidavit offers a peek into discussions among hospital staff members, undertaken in intensely difficult conditions.

The victims were actually patients of Lifecare Hospital, an intensive-care unit that leased space from Memorial and had a separate staff. With chaotic evacuations taking place, many by boat, Dr. Pou and a Memorial official who has not been charged by Mr. Foti told witnesses that the Lifecare patients “were probably not going to survive,” according to the affidavit.

But the patient identified as E. E. — the only one whose case is discussed in detail — was described as “aware, conscious and alert.” He also weighed 380 pounds and was paralyzed.

A nurse close to E. E. was asked by Dr. Pou to sedate him, but the nurse refused. “I take full responsibility,” a witness quotes Dr. Pou as saying.

One of the witnesses said she saw a nurse, later identified as Ms. Budo, give an injection to the oldest of the victims, identified as 92-year-old R.S., and then heard R.S. say, “That burns.”

The affidavit suggests that many staff members at the hospital were familiar with Dr. Pou’s plan, and that it was openly discussed. At the very least, there was widespread knowledge that “we’re not going to leave any living patients behind,” as Susan Mulderick, described as “incident commander” for Memorial Medical Center, is quoted as saying in the affidavit.

But the affidavit also portrays witnesses being barred by staff members from entering an area on the second floor where Lifecare patients were housed on that final day.

Although only the initials and birthdates of the victims were given, Lou Ann Savoie Jacob, who lives in Henderson, Nev., said the attorney general’s office had told her that R.S. was her mother, Rose Savoie.

Like many others who lost family members during Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Jacob went through the agony of not knowing what had befallen her mother, when and where she had died or when her body would be returned. But the agony was made worse by the knowledge that Ms. Savoie, whose family members regularly lived into their 90’s, had been recovering well.

“I kind of suspected that she was euthanized because I saw her on the 28th of August in the hospital,” the day before the storm, Ms. Jacob said. “She was sitting up, talking to us, no IV’s; her blood was good.”

Asked if she would consider the death of her mother a homicide, Ms. Jacob hesitated.

“In a way I don’t blame those nurses,” she said. “It was a terrible thing they went through. They made a decision, and maybe it was wrong, maybe it was right. I don’t know. I was not there. But I know I would have liked my mother to pass in a different way.”

However, Ms. Jacob said, “I don’t think they should have euthanized all those people. I think maybe some of them could have come through.”

Paulette Watson Harris, a daughter of another of the four patients, Ireatha Butler Watson, was interviewed by The New York Times several months ago and said she thought her mother, who had dementia and gangrene that prevented her from walking, might have died of heat exhaustion.

On Tuesday, she said she was shocked to hear that her mother’s death at age 90 might have been a homicide, although she said she had been suspicious because of the lack of information from the hospital.

“I think it was a selfish move on the doctor’s and the nurses’ part if they decided to do this,” said Ms. Harris, who lives in Jefferson, La. “I have never been in that situation before, but I don’t think the choice would be mine to end someone else’s life just because I think they’re miserable."

Ms. Watson said she had hired a lawyer and called the arrests “a step in the right direction.”

Dr. Pou, who has been practicing medicine for 16 years, is on the staff of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. Her biography on the L.S.U. Web site said she is an associate professor.